A Peace to Replace Justice
by something like human
Summary: Several years after the wars, Wu Fei is ask to identify some refugees from his lost colony. Among them, he finds someone he was sure was dead. 2x5 past 5xM
1. Chapter 1

Title: A Peace to Replace Justice

Author: Something Like Human

Rating: T

Pairings: 2x5, past 5xM

Warnings: Nothing that I can think of yet.

Disclaimer: I don't own Gundam Wing. Right now, I've been taken prisoner by Long Meilan and she is demanding that I write her.

POV: Wu Fei

Coming home from work, I tossed my keys in the basket on the table by the door. It was a mundane action; one I completed every day. I quickly shuffled through the mail I picked up at the door. A bank statement, some bills, and mostly junk mail were all that we received. I tossed the statement and bills on the table beside the basket with the keys.

I walked through the house pulling at my uniform tie. The house was by no means large but it was large enough for myself and Duo. He had crashed on my couch shortly after I had moved in when we recruited him to the Preventers. That had been almost two years ago now and he had since moved off of the couch and into the master bedroom with me. He had attracted my attention back during the war but I had been too young and foolish to see him for who he was. It was only later, in the quiet moments after long shifts at work that I came to really appreciate him.

He had joked that he always seemed to be attracted to dangerous men. I had originally argued that I thought he was in love with Yuy but he claimed that he had gotten over that infatuation very quickly. He also claimed that he always thought I was straight. I stated that I had never claimed any sort of attraction to any one gender. It was the truth. I was not really attracted to one gender or another, it was more like I was attracted to strong individuals. People who challenged me both physically and intellectually. Duo had that in spades. As a Gundam pilot and a Preventer, he was a fierce warrior. His quick wit and sharp tongue kept me on my toes. What I had originally mistaken for stupidity, had actually been from his lack of a formal education. In the years since the war, he had worked to fill the gaps in his education.

He had also convinced me to move out of active duty at the Preventers. It was a something that I fought against for quite some time. When he finally did challenge me to join him in the training department, that was when I finally relaxed. We trained all of the new recruits before they went into active duty. I could take pride in actually flexing my intellectual skills instead of just physical. It was hard work getting the the fresh faces up to the standards that we needed them to be.

I changed my clothes. It was an adjustment to me after the wars to do the routine after work. During the war, we had always been 'on duty'. Duo had eventually taught me, especially when we started in the training department with a regular nine to five schedule, that the key was to change out of your work clothes at the end of the day. It was strangely the key to get me to relax and move on from active duty. He had finally taught me how to balance my life.

"You beat me home," my braided lover teased as he walked into the bedroom. "I stayed a little late with a small group of the kids. They are really struggling with learning breaking and entering skills. I don't know what it is with the new group but they just seem really young and inexperienced to me."

"You say that like they aren't all older than us by several years," I replied pulling a comfortable sweater on over my head. "We are only twenty."

"We're old men in Gundam years though!"

"You may have a point," I laughed along with him. Laughing came much easier with Duo in my life. It had been very freeing to allow myself to laugh again. Being with him definitely gave me a lot to laugh at.

"You know, I love it when you steal my sweater," he told me tugging at the hem. "Red suits you."

"I think at this point, it's my sweater," I teased. "I wear it more than you."

We settled in after eating dinner together. We were both curled up on the couch with our books. The few years of age and maturity had calmed Duo quite a bit. Don't get me wrong, he still had his moments but he rarely acted like a chipmunk on espresso any more. He had discovered a passion for reading. It was something we shared together that at times surprised our friends. The only consession we had though for these quiet moments at home was that he had to have the radio on while reading. I didn't mind though.

My cell phone rang startling us out of our books. I pulled it from my pants pocket and frowned at it. "Chang speaking."

"Still all business," Sally's voice chided.

"Well, when the office calls on your night off, a Friday night at that, excuse me for not being so cheerful."

"Point taken," she replied. "If it wasn't important, I would not have called."

Duo was looking at me oddly. He had turned the radio down so he could listen to my phone call. He was leaning close to me to hear Sally's voice. "What Preventers business couldn't wait until I clock in on Monday?"

"We found something that may interest you."

"Woman, don't play around," I warned her. "Just tell me what is going on. Also, weren't you in the L5 cluster investigating resistance factions? What are you doing calling from Headquarters?"

"I just got back a few minutes ago," she explained. "We didn't find the faction we were looking for. We did find a small group of refugees from your home colony."

"There were survivors?" I asked not able to hide the shock in my voice. "Are you sure? I figured there had to be a few people who weren't on colony when it was destroyed but not a group."

"It isn't by any means a large group. Just a handful of adults and a few young people and small children. It seems that the elders sent a small contingent off colony several months before it was destroyed."

"Who are they?" I asked wondering if anyone from my family was left alive.

"That's just it, we may need you to come in this weekend and help identify people. We were hoping that you could confirm that these people are who they say they are."

"I can come in this evening," I said looking at Duo who was already putting our books on the coffee table and turning off the radio. "Do you need us uniformed?"

"Nah," she said. "It's after hours and most of them are just pictures. They did not want to leave the colony. A few have come to Earth seeking asylum. If they are who they say they are, we are working on finding them a new place to live."

"How many came to Earth with you?"

"About ten - mostly the young people," Sally explained. "I'll see you in a few then."

I hung up from the call just as Duo was handing me my coat and shoes. "Do you think it's anyone from your family?"

"Possibly, I was only on colony briefly before it self destructed so I couldn't tell you who was there and who wasn't. It wasn't like it was a social visit."

"Still, it's someone from home," he said with a smile. "Good thing I've been brushing up on my Madarin."

"Try not to offend anyone with your pronunciations," I warned him. We took his car. I was nervous but was trying not to show it. He knew me well enough to know anyways. I was allowing myself to remember my friends and family whom I thought were mostly dead from the war. I had mourned them for a long time and was not sure how I felt to learn that some of them might still be alive even after all this time.

Sally met us at the door and led us to a conference room. We really didn't speak much on the way there. Duo walked beside me the whole time. Sally did not say anything at his presence. She knew me well enough too to know that he would not have let me come alone tonight.

I walked in the conference room and my eyes immediately scanned the room. I recognized a few faces although they were older. Most had been young adults when I had left for the war. I could see a few of them had small children with them.

"Chang!" One of the young men exclaimed. I recognized him as my distant cousing Long Sheng. He would be about 26 years old now. We bowed to each other. "We followed your progress through the war. You brought honor to the Long Clan."

"Long Sheng," I addressed him. "I am surprised to see everyone. I was not told that there were anyone off colony when it was destroyed."

"There were a small group of us that the Elders had leave the colony," he explained to me. "They were afraid that either the colony would come under attack because of its involvement in Operation Meteor. We later learned though that they had already had plans to destroy their own colony in case they were threatened."

"Who all is left?"

"There were not a lot of us," he said glancing around the room. "It was basically a few Elders to maintain our history and the few of us around my age who were just starting families. Others were given the choice to leave but many chose to stay."

"Fools," I argued. "If they knew that they were going to be attacked or forced to self destruct, why would they stay?"

"They claimed that it was their honor to stay," he replied with a sad shrug of his shoulders. "Ours was a proud clan."

"There is no pride in mass suicide, but I do not wish to argue the point tonight," I stated. "Who else survives?"

We went through a list of names and recent photographs of the colonist who chose to stay in space. Most were very distant relatives or aquaintances. They were people I vaguely remembered from the training hall or from seeing around the colony. The several gathered in the room with us were all around Sheng's age or were their young children. I could understand their desire to get off colony to protect their young ones. Sally used my confirmation of most of them to verify their identities since most of their finger prints or records had been lost when the colony was destroyed. They were then divided up by families and shown out of the room to go to their safe house. Sally had told us that they had set up a makeshift safe house near headquarters until they could find somewhere more appropriate for them to go. Sheng and his wife paused as they were leaving the room. He put his hand on my shoulder and squeezed gently. I told him that he could call me any time and gave him one of my cards. We weren't close growing up but having lost the rest of our family, it was nice to not be so alone any more.

The last couple of people in the room had stayed silent the entire time. They hung back from the rest of the group. It was a woman who had spent the entire time staring out the windows over the city of Sanq with a small child on her lap. You could barely make out the stars over the lights of the city at night. But to someone who had spent their entire life on a colony, seeing any night sky for the first time was amazing.

"Ma'am," Duo said walking over to her. He switched to Mandarin and asked her to join me at the table. He still sounded like an American trying to pronounce the words but he did it well enough. He must have startled her when he walked up because she jerked her her head around from gazing out the window to look at him. At the angle I was sitting, I still could not see her face though.

Duo apologized for scaring her before looking at the child in her lap. "Well, aren't you a beautiful little girl."

The child smiled up at him. "You speak Madarin!" She exclaimed looking at the blue eyed American man. She looked to be around five years old. Her voice was accented much like the rest of my clansmen when she spoke English. "And I wanted to practice my English."

"Well, why don't we come over here and keep practicing," he explained extending his hand to the child. She took it easily and followed him around the table towards me. I had been so busy watching their exchange that I had not noticed that the child's mother had stood up and turned around to face us. When I did lift my eyes to meet hers, I was speechless.

"Wu Fei," was all that she said to me. I was glad that I was already sitting down because I knew that my legs would not have been able to hold me up. There, standing before me, was someone I had mourned for the last five years. There was no way that she could be alive but yet there was no way to mistake who she was. The face was the same, except older, more elegant instead of childish. The hair was longer and not up in pigtails. Her voice was unmistakeable though. It had not changed at all.

"Nataku," I breathed causing her eyes to widen. Never, since the day she had died, had I ever even thought of her name being anything but the God of Justice.

tbc.

Author's note: So, Meilan has wrangled all of my muses up and beat the snot out of them. She is demanding that I write her a fic in which she lives. I'm nervous becuase it's been ages since I started a brand new multipart fic. I'm still working on my Xover as a priority though, so don't dispair. And as always, 2x5 is my main OTP. I can't help it - it's what got me into the fandom in the first place. I just want to know if there is enough interest in my doing a Meilan fic.


	2. Chapter 2

Title: A Peace to Replace Justice

Author: Something Like Human

Rating: T

Pairings: 2x5, past 5xM

Warnings: Nothing that I can think of yet.

Disclaimer: I don't own Gundam Wing. Right now, I've been taken prisoner by Long Meilan and she is demanding that I write her.

POV: Wu Fei

"Nataku," the name seemed almost foreign on my lips. She looked at me curiously when I said it. Duo had perked up from talking to the little girl to look between the two of us. His mouth dropped open as the realization dawned on him as to what I had said. I watched him for a moment until he looked down at the child holding his hand. He then looked at me and I could see the thought he was having when he looked at me.

"All the words that you used to use and that's all that you can say?" The young woman said with a smirk on her face.

Shaken from my stupor, I looked back at her, "There are too many things that I want to say but I think right now, you are the one who needs to do the talking. Not that you ever had a problem with that either."

We stared at each other. Duo then broke the silence by addressing the little girl, "I think these two grownups need to talk for a bit. How about we go find a snack? I think I have some cookies at my desk. Would you like to help me go get them?"

The little girl looked back to the woman who just nodded at her. "I would like some cookies."

He led the little girl past me to leave the conference room. His office was several floors down so it would take them a while to get there and back. We had some time to talk. I looked at the child as she walked by though. I don't know what I was expecting to see though. She seemed healthy.

"So what did you want me to talk about?" Even after all this time, her smirk was still infuriating.

"Can we start with how you're not dead and then move on to why I wasn't told that you were alive?"

"Let me sit down first," she said. I watched as she glanced around her to where she had been sitting before. She reached out and grabbed a cane that I had not noticed leaning against the chair before. I watched dumbfounded as she walked over to the empty chair opposite of me. She leaned heavily on the cane and strongly favored her right leg as she walked. "Are you sure she is safe with that other man?"

"The girl? They only thing you have to worry about with her being with Preventer Maxwell is the number of cookies she will eat. He'll return her safe and sound but probably on a sugar rush."

"Figures," she said sitting down gently. She kept the cane in her hands though. She played with it nervously. "I was dead. They resuscitated me after the battle. My heart had stopped for a few minutes but they were able to bring me back. As you can see, my pelvis was crushed as well. Recovery was a hellish experience."

"But why did they tell me that you had died? I went to your funeral!"

"I was told later that they thought my death would motivate you to fight in a way that they had not been able to otherwise," she said dismissively. She tucked her loose hair behind her ear. I had rarely seen it loose when we were yonger. It was really only the few times we had spent the night together to consumate our marriage as the elders wanted that I had seen her not have her hair up in pigtails. "I told them that they were full of it but I guess that they were right."

"They manipulated me!" I said angrily. I wanted to be angry at her since she was there in front of me but I knew that it was not her fault. Judging from the extent of her injuries, she was in no way able to defy them or to get a message to me. Within days of her death, I was fully immersed into training with the mobile suit.

"You're shocked by this? After they forced us to marry just so you had enough standing in the Clan to pilot the suit because they thought you were the most suited for it. Then they blew up the entire colony just so you would keep fighting? Well, it was supposed to be because they didn't want to be used against you but I'm pretty sure it was because they wanted to be used against you in the way they wanted to."

I shook my head. I was angry at them for everything that they had done to me. "Where were you when the war was going on then, since you obviously weren't on colony when it was destroyed."

"Oh, I had been recovering on a different colony by that time," she replied tapping the table with her cane. "They couldn't have the Heir of the Dragon Clan put in danger by being on the same colony. I was with the other refugees the entire time. My grandmother kept the community together on L5-C0497 and controlled every part of my recovery."

"I didn't see her name on the list that Preventer Po had of all of the refugees," I stated.

"She died several weeks ago," was the only response that I got. She looked down then at her hands resting on the cane. I remembered distinctly how much she had fought against her very traditional grandmother. As a child, she had wanted to be as strong as the men in the while her grandmother had wanted her to take on the more tradition female role.

"I'm sorry for your loss," I stated hollowly.

"Meh, I'm just glad that she's gone," she replied wryly. "With her still in charge of the Clan, we would have been hidden until An could take the leadership role. Where I had thought she had controlled my life, she was even more controlling of my daughter's."

"An? So she is your daughter," I stated. I had suspected as much but I had not wanted to dwell on the thought of the child.

"Heh, the worst part of my recovery was that I was pregnant," she actually grimaced at the memory. "They were too afraid to operate on my mangled pelvis for fear that I would lose the baby. It was the new heir to the Dragon Clan and all that. I didn't matter any more, only the child. The most control I got over her or myself at that time was naming her."

"An," I stated testing the name out. "It means 'peace', doesn't it?"

"Well, I figured taking the name of Nataku when the world was on the brink of war had brought me nothing but pain. I wanted my daughter to not be burdened with such things as justice and war and battle."

It was a surprisingly deep and introspective statement coming from the girl who denied her entire existence as a female to take up an ideal. She really had gone through hell after she had 'died'. I couldn't imagine what she had experienced recovering from near death with such a broken body only to learn that she was pregnant and they wouldn't help her with her injuries as much as they could because that child was more important than her.

"So, An is my daughter, then?" I finally let myself make that logical leap that I had not allowed myself to make earlier.

For that question, I received a whack to my head with her cane. She was quick with it and I had not expected her to strike me. Needless to say, it hurt.

"That's for even questioning her parentage," she said snidely. "And any child as difficult as her, has to be yours."

tbc.


	3. Chapter 3

Title: A Peace to Replace Justice

Author: Something Like Human

Rating: T

Pairings: 2x5, past 5xM

Warnings: Nothing that I can think of yet.

Disclaimer: I don't own Gundam Wing. Right now, I've been taken prisoner by Long Meilan and she is demanding that I write her.

POV: Wu Fei

"And any child as difficult as her, has to be yours."

I laughed while looking at her. It was like the pot calling the kettle black. My memories of her in childhood had been anything but easy. She had been a terror on the colony. The more her parents and grandparents tried to control her, the more she fought back. Even when they finally allowed her learn to fight because they thought that it would at least burn out a lot of her energy every day. In the training hall, she showed excellent behavior. She listened to her instructors, she followed the rules, she did everything that was expected of her and more. Outside of training, she was still the same old child.

"So I was the difficult child?" I argued raising an eye brow at her. "I seem to remember it being the other way around when we were kids."

"Well, she's too girly to take after me," she argued. "An seems to think that dolls and ponies are the best things in the world. She'd rather read books on princesses than action ones."

"She's about what? Four years old?" I asked finally letting my brain focus on the child herself. The child that was my daughter. That was such a foreign thought to me. After I thought I had lost my wife and my clan, I had given up all thoughts of parenthood. Then choosing a male partner really limited my ability to have children of my own.

"An will be five next month. It makes me feel old."

"I've missed five years of my daughter's life," I lamented.

"Don't blame me about that," the young woman across from me snapped. "If I had my way, I would have dumped her on you the first time she soiled her diaper."

"You didn't want her?" I was shocked at what she had said. I looked at her eyes and realized that I had seriously pissed her off. She took another swing at my head with her cane and this time I ducked.

"No, you fool!" She shrieked at me. "I could never give her up. I was just implying that I would have gladly dumped her off on you for diaper duty. You seriously can't imagine the foul things that come from something so tiny and cute."

"Okay, I'm almost glad that I missed that stage," I said with disgust. I had heard rumors of bodily fuctions from babies from some of my coworkers.

Our conversation was interrupted by Duo poking his head in the door, "Can we come in?"

I nodded and he pushed the door open the rest of the way to walk in. He had to duck to get through the door way because perched on his shoulders was An. She was smiling while holding on to his braid. There was a bit of chocolate residue around her mouth. I couldn't help but smile at her.

"So the kiddo and I were talking on the way back," he started talking while bouncing his way over to our table. "Staying in safe houses really sucks so I think the little princess here should just come home with me. What do ya say, Princess An?"

"I'm not a princess, silly," she giggled. "And I don't want to go anywhere without mama."

"Preventer... Maxwell," Meilan struggled trying to remember his name from earlier. "I think I would like my daughter to stay with me, if you don't mind."

"You misunderstood me, ma'am," my current lover said to my past one. Just thinking of them that way was making my life seem more and more complicated. "The offer was for both of you. I wouldn't dream of separating a parent from their child."

"That will not be necessary. The safe house is fine," she argued. It was then that I realized that she was missing a key piece to this argument because she had really been the only one forthcoming with information this evening.

"What Maxwell is trying to offer is letting you and An the chance to stay with me, if you want. It's not like we don't have the room."

"You two live together?" She asked with a very skeptical look on her face. I looked over at Duo and he looked back at me. I just shrugged.

"I guess that I didn't give you two enough time to talk it out then," he said. "Do you want us to step out again?"

"No, stay," my wife urged. "I'm just dying to find out what he was supposed to tell me while you were feeding my little girl cookies. If she doesn't sleep tonight because of all of that sugar, it's your fault."

She fixed her gaze back at me. I noted that her hands were toying with cane. I was actually a bit afraid that she would try to strike me with it again. Well, who was I kidding, she was definitely going to hit me again. I just wasn't sure what was going to set her off.

"Yes, Duo and I live together. We have a house not to far from here. I would be honored if you would stay with us," I replied a bit too formally but I was a little nervous. "Not that there is anything wrong with the safe house at all, but I would really like you to stay with us. It wouldn't be right to send you off now knowing what all you've been through."

She started laughing then. "Oh that's just too rich! My husband thinks I'm dead and turns gay!"

"Well, it wasn't exactly like that," I replied feeling rather indignant. "And who said that I was gay?"

"You're living with another guy. Also, don't forget, I so called that years ago," she replied still laughing. She was laughing so hard, she had tears in her eyes. "Seriously, I always said you were gay which was why you were a lousy husband."

"He's your husband, Mama?"

We all looked at little An. I had forgotten she was in the room when Meilan started teasing me. I didn't know how to repsond to the little girl because I was not sure what her mother had told her about me.

"Yes, An," she told our daughter with her smirk still in place. "That pansy over there is my husband and your father."

"He's not pansy!" The little girl argued with her mother shaking her tiny head vehemently. "He was a Gundam Pilot!"

"Grandmother and the other clan members we lived with all fed her stories of your heroics during the war. They filled her head with the idea that your some sort of superhuman. I can't seem to convince her how weak you were," my wife lamented.

"All the Gundam pilots are heros!" The little one argued with her mother. I could see how those two would butt heads constantly. An was gripping my lover's braid tightly. He reached up to loosen her hands on it. She mumbled an apology when she realized she had yanked on it enough to hurt him.

"So you like Gundam pilots?" he asked her with a smile on his face.

"I like to hear the stories about them," she replied. "I've never met one until now."

"Hi, I'm Duo Maxwell," he snickered when he said it. "There, now you've met two!"

"Really? Awesome!"

"Only you would go off to war and wind up getting laid," she laughed at me.

"It wasn't like we got together during the war," I attemted to defend my honor. "I was still in mourning during both of the wars since I thought I had been widowed and all!"

"Mama, can we please stay with the Gundam pilots? Please, please, please?"

"Ugh," she said rolling her eyes at her daughter's begging. "I guess that we'll have to since I'll not hear the end of it if she doesn't get her own way."

"Yay!"

tbc.


	4. Chapter 4

Title: A Peace to Replace Justice

Author: Something Like Human

Rating: T

Pairings: 2x5, past 5xM

Warnings: Nothing that I can think of yet.

Disclaimer: I don't own Gundam Wing. Right now, I've been taken prisoner by Long Meilan and she is demanding that I write her.

POV: Wu Fei

The next few days were awkward and a little surreal. We settled into a loose routine by the second day. I am not really sure what I was expecting having my wife and my lover both living under the same roof as me. Everyone was walking on egg shells trying not to say the wrong thing. It was kind of weird having MeiLan being polite all of the time.

We set up both my wife and child up in the same bedroom for the time being. An wanted to be close to her mother. I felt badly for my wife. She appeared to really struggle walking up and down the stairs with her cane but she insisted on using that bedroom with her daughter.

"We can shift the bedrooms around," I offered on the second day they were there. "The den downstairs that we use for an office can be moved to one of the bedrooms upstairs and we can move you two down there."

She swung her cane at my head again a that suggestion. "Idiot, I can manage a few stairs!"

"I wasn't implying that you could not," I countered trying to cover my concern for her ability to navigate the staircase. "I was just trying to give you more of your own space."

"That will not be necessary," she replied as she stormed out of the room. It was more like an angry hobbling. It made me sad. She did not want to talk about her injuries at all. She did not want to be reminded that it impaired her in any way. I felt so bad for her when I saw her trying to walk and especially going up and down the stairs. I want to help her so badly because you could just tell that she was in a lot of pain. She wouldn't let me help her though. Despite everything that had happened to her, she still had her pride.

I walked into the living room to find Duo sitting on the floor at the coffee table with my daughter. I was having a very hard time wrapping my mind around the fact that the little person living in my spare bedroom was my daughter. I missed her birth and all of her first steps, and really all of her firsts. People always say that they see their features and such in their children. I was not really sure what I saw in her. She looked almost like a perfect mixure of both of us but still somehow her own person. What was the most unsettling was seeing her facial expressions. I was not surprised that she could perfectly mimic her mother's infuriating smirk but it was when I found her scowling at my lover that I stopped dead in my tracks. The little girl had never been around me at all during her life and there was my scowl on her tiny face.

Maxwell sat there for a moment staring at her with his mouth agape. He saw the same thing that I did. He looked at me for a second and then back at the little girl. He then started laughing his head off at her. An, for her part, realized that he was laughing at her when she was already angry at him, and scowled even harder. Her little hands were fisted and perched on her hips as she stood in front of the lauhging man. It was as funny as it was unsettling.

She started yelling at him then when he didn't stop laughing at her. He tried to stiffle his laughter but, typical to Maxwell, once he started laughing, it was hard for him to stop. It was when her tirade at my partner escalated to her insulting his parentage that I scowled at her. She had not seen me in the room yet since I was off to the side and her focus was solely on the braided man. He looked at me and started laughing again. When she saw him laughing at her again, she struck out with a tiny fist in rage towards his face. His large hands blocked her onslaught. His eyes were wide though as she kept trying to hit him.

"An! Stop!" I said in a very strong voice. When she ignored me to continue yelling at Maxwell, I reached out and grabbed her tiny arms. I tried to not hurt her and to stop her from hurting my lover. He was still kind of frozen in place watching it all take place. The little girl struggled against my hold and started screaming. I held her in place as she thrashed about and screamed herself hoarse. Even on her worst day, MeiLan had never tantraumed like this as a child. I had never seen anything like this. I turned my attention to trying ot hold her still so that she couldn't hurt herself.

"Calm down," I said softly. My voice was lost in her screams. I countinued trying to soothe her. "Shhh, it's okay. You just need to calm down. Don't hurt yourself."

After the longest few minutes of my life, the little body in my arms finally stilled. She was breathing hard and there were angry tears rolling down her cheeks. Her face was flushed and her eyes were still wild. I held her loosely to ensure that she would not try to lash out again.

"Are you quite finished?" I asked with my voice showing more anger than I had intended.

"Let go!" She demanded with a feeble attempt to pull herself away from me.

"I won't have you hitting anyone," I replied. "That kind of behavior is unacceptable! You need to apologise to him right now!"

"No!"

"An!" I said sternly.

Maxwell chose that moment to step in. He eased my hands off of her arms and rubbed them slightly. When she finally was able to look him in the eyes, he spoke very gently to her. "I'm sorry for laughing at you. That was wrong. I was only laughing at you because you looked just like your father when he is angry. But hitting me was wrong."

"I don't like people laughing at me," she replied in a very small voice. The anger was gone though.

"I know that now," he replied with a sad smile. "We're just getting to know each other so we have a lot to learn yet. Hitting me was not the way to let me know what you don't like. Just now, when you told me that you didn't like it, that was the way to do it. Do you understand? It's so much easier to tell me something than to hit me."

"Yeah," An mumbled while looking down at her feet.

"So, can you say that you're sorry to me for hitting me and then we can hug to make up?" Duo asked her while openning his arms up to her. "Then we can go back to coloring pictures."

"I'm sorry for hitting you," the little girl replied before diving into his arms. He held her tight for a moment before pulling back and handing her the purple crayon. They sat back down on the floor at the coffee table to color.

I was kind of in awe with how smoothly Maxwell handled the situation. I watched them coloring pictures for a few minutes before walking out of the room. I could hardly believe the anger that I had seen in the tiny child. I knew that I was an angry child but I had never lashed out towards an adult like that when I was that young.

"I see you've finally met 'An The Terror'," MeiLan said as I entered the kitchen. She handed me a cup of tea. "Welcome to my world."

"Is she like that a lot?"

"Um, define 'a lot'," she replied sarcastically. "Grandmother tended to give her anything that she wanted. When I would try to discipline her, let's just say, that was a small tantraum. She can scream for hours. I just couldn't hold on to her like you did."

"I had no idea," I said sipping the tea. I was at a loss in this situation. I wasn't yet used to the idea that I was a parent and then I find out that she was prone to behavior like this. It was a little daunting.

"Believe me," MeiLan shrugged while sipping her tea as well. "These last few weeks without my grandmother have been a nightmare with her. When I would try to do anything with her before, she would just run to grandmother and that would be the end of it. Lately, it's been all I can do to not hit her with my cane."

"Her world's changed and she's trying to catch up," Duo said entering the kitchen. "Your grandmother was her main caregiver since she was trying to control so much of what was going on for An. She died which is hard for anyone to deal with, let alone a four year old. Then she moves from the only home she's ever known. That's pretty rough, too. Lastly, she's just met her father. That's a lot to handle all at once."

"That still doesn't excuse her behavior," I argued. "She could have hurt you!"

"Yeah, it doens't excuse it," he replied. "I've seen it before though. All those kids coming into the orphanage when I was a kid tended to act like that. Some were worse than others. I was pretty terrible myself. If it wasn't for Sister Helen, I probably would have killed someone. Well, killed someone at the orphanage, let's not count my teenaged years."

"Well, I'm hoping she never has to kill anyone," MeiLan stated. "I just don't know what to do with her."

"Well, it sounds like we're in the same boat," I stated. "You never really got a chance to parent her and neither have I. We have a lot to learn."

"It's a good thing you have him around though," she stated while using her cane to tap Duo in the leg. "He at least seems to have a clue where you're still just an idiot."

"Hey, now!" I exclaimed. I knew I was taking her bait but I couldn't stop myself. We argued and said some very biting things back and forth. Duo just shook his head and left the kitchen. I finally just stormed out the door. I needed to get out of the house. I took a walk down the street and only returned once I had calmed down. My partner was right, it really was a stressful situation in the house. There had been a lot of changes going on. It was going to take a lot of gettng used to.


	5. Chapter 5

Title: A Peace to Replace Justice

Author: Something Like Human

Rating: T

Pairings: 2x5, past 5xM

Warnings: Nothing that I can think of yet.

Disclaimer: I don't own Gundam Wing. Right now, I've been taken prisoner by Long Meilan and she is demanding that I write her.

POV: Wu Fei

It was late when we all went to bed that night. I was still mulling over the fight I had had with Mei Lan. An's tantrum was very disturbing to watch. I could not imagine Mei Lan dealing with that alone. I was not sure that I could handle it even with her help and Duo's. I lay in bed for quite a while thinking before I finally drifted off to sleep.

I was not surprised when I woke up in the wee hours of the morning alone. Duo was prone to nightmares and would get up through the night. Most of the time he would just go downstairs and read for a while before coming back up to go back to sleep. I lay in bed for a while and he did not return. I could not seem to fall back to sleep either. I decided that I should probably go check on my lover to see if he was okay. I made my way down stairs as quietly as I could. I did not want to wake my daughter up so I put my best stealth skills to use.

When I got downstairs, I noticed that the light was not on in the living room. This was strange because that was typically where Duo chose to read when he could not sleep. I did not turn any lights on though as I made my way towards the kitchen. I figured that maybe he was in there getting a snack. He had not eaten much for dinner. None of us had, really.

As I approached the kitchen, I could see the light shining under the door. More interesting however was that I could hear voices come from within the room. I crept close to the door and listened. I could hear Duo was talking softly to Mei Lan. I knew that I really should not listen in but I was curious as to what those two had to talk about.

"That man is infuriating," I could hear my wife say.

"He does have a bad habit of picking fights when he's upset with something," Duo explained. They were speaking English which kind of surprised me. Maxwell had been trying really hard over the last few days to talk in a language that the girls were more comfortable with. Mei Lan knew English but had always disliked speaking it. "And believe me, seeing his daughter throw a fit like that, it was upsetting."

"That's just how she is," she replied. "I don't really know what to do with her. She doesn't seem to listen to me."

"We can help you," he offered. I could hear her make a scoffing noise in response but Duo interrupted her before she could argue. "I think we're all going to have to team up to tame the brat right out of her. She is a lovely girl but, you have to agree, at times, she can be quite a brat. We need to work on making sure that we see more of the lovely little girl than the brat."

"Good luck with that," Mei Lan laughed humorlessly.

I could hear movement in the room. A shuffling of chairs before I could hear something bump into the table. I heard Duo's light footsteps hurrying around towards the table before I heard him speak again. "You could have asked for more tea. I could have gotten it for you."

"I don't need your help. I can get my own tea," she bit off. I could actually hear the pain in her voice. I suspected that she had tried to get up from the chair at the table and had not been able to due to her bad hips.

"Yeah, but maybe I like to help people," Duo stated turning the argument around. "Have you ever considered that someone might want to help you because they want to not because they pity you?"

"So you pity me?" She tried to bait him like she usually did to me.

"Hell no!" He replied and I could hear him pull out a chair at the table, I assumed to sit down in. "But you seem to think that anyone offering to help you thinks less of you. I don't know what it was like where you're from but where I come from, we help those we care about."

"I don't want you to pity me," she said. Her voice sounded very weary and disturbingly unguarded. She was never like that around me. She had known Duo for a scant few days and she was already more open with him. I was not sure how I felt about that.

"Why would anyone pity you?"

"Because I'm broken," her voice held so much pain in it that my breath caught in my throat. "I'm in so much pain all of the time that I rarely sleep, I can't concentrate when I am awake, and I can barely care for myself. "

"Pfft, like hell you're broken," my lover argued. "You were almost killed in a mobile suit battle when you were barely 14 years old! I'd say you're pretty strong to have survived that let alone been able to care for your daughter despite your injuries."

"Strong? I had been wheelchair bound until I left for earth this week," she lamented. I had not known that fact. I had seen her really struggle to walk even with her cane but she had never let on that she had not really walked much since the accident. "It feels like I have hot pokers being driven up into my hips at all times. It doesn't matter if I'm walking, sitting, or lying down. When it's not the hot poker sensation, it's shooting pains running down one or both of my legs. Or, my personal favorite, back spasms so bad that I can't even stand up. Sometimes, I even get the fun of one of my legs going completely numb causing me to fall over."

"Why didn't you bring your chair with you when you came here?"

"Why would I? It was a dreadful thing that just emphasized my weakness. I can walk, damn it!"

"I'm not saying that you can't walk but if it helps you conserve some of your strength to use on more important things, then maybe it would be a good idea. There is no shame in using something that makes life more bearable. "

"You don't understand anything," she argued. I had seen her use that tactic many times before. It usually meant that she didn't want to keep arguing.

"Yeah, well, maybe I don't. It was just a suggestion really," he said flippantly before yawning. "I'm going to head back up to bed before 'Fei misses me."

"Don't want to keep your lover waiting," she taunted.

I didn't hear what his retort was. I was busy trying to get back up to our bedroom as quickly as possible. I was thankful that I got there quietly because all I needed was to wake up An since everyone else seemed to be awake. I sat on the bed for a few minutes thinking before Duo walked in. Our eyes met across the moonlit bedroom. I could tell that he knew that I had not been sitting in bed waiting for him the whole time. I was still perched at the edge of my side of the bed with the covers thrown back.

"Hi, I didn't mean to wake you," he whispered. "I just couldn't sleep."

"So you were having a heart to heart with our houseguest?" I said in an accusatory tone. The venom in my voice even surprised me. I was not exactly mad at him but I was upset.

"She couldn't sleep either," he replied sitting down on the bed. "Frankly, she barely sleeps at all. No wonder she's so cranky during the day."

"And you would know this because of your nightly rendezvous with my wife?"

"Well, when we're both nocturnal, we're bound to run into each other," he pointed out. "She just needed someone to talk to and I just happened to be there."

"How convenient," I said in a snarky voice.

"Don't be jealous, 'Fei," he said reaching out to me. He started to rub my shoulders as he spoke to me. "I get the feeling that she really doesn't have anyone else to talk to and may be too afraid to talk to you."

"What does she have to be afraid of?" His soothing gesture was anything but soothing to me right then. I jerked my body away from him. I sat with my back turned to him, not looking at him.

"Well, the fact that it's hard to talk to you when you're upset about something," Duo suggested without reaching for me again. "And after the last few days, you have a lot to be upset about."

"And you're just so much easier to talk to since you're practically a stranger to her," I countered.

"Maybe she feels safe talking to me because I am a stranger to her. I'm a little confused by it myself since I'm her husband's gay lover but if she needs a should to lean on or an ear to listen, I'm glad to help."

"Heh, so you're just close girlfriends now, is that all it is?"

"Damn it, Fei," he exclaimed before catching himself for being too loud. We both stopped to listen for a minute to see if we had woken up the little girl. When we heard nothing coming from the next room, he went on. "Don't be like this. You're acting like you're the jealous one! She's your wife. I'm kind of the one in the situation that is more on shaky ground. Technically, you're having an affair with me, you know? She's your wife and the mother of your child, for crying out loud. You named your Gundam after her. I have a lot to compete with here."

"It's not a competition," I said finally looking across the bed at him. He was sitting in the middle of the bed with his knees pulled up to his chest. His arms were wrapped around his legs. "I thought it was kind of apparent since you're in here with me and she's in the guest room. Yes, she is my wife but we didn't choose that for ourselves. I chose to be with you."

"Yeah, but it's still intimidating," he said softly. "Whether you believe it or not, you do love her. I watched you mourn her during the war. It may not have been a romantic love, but you do care about her. And now, she has come back to you and to tie her further to you, she has made you a father."

I reached out to him and he welcomed my embrace. "Yeah, but I don't feel tied to them at all. I don't really feel like I'm a husband or a father. Hell, that last part is terrifying. I have a kid."

"I know, mind boggling. And here, I thought we'd have to adopt!"

I laughed weakly at him. We had talked in the past about his love for kids and as he put it, my lack of disdain towards them. He had told me once that he was surprised that I was comfortable being around kids. He had caught me once playing a board game with Mariemaia in Lady Une's office when our boss didn't have any child care that day. I never thought that I was good with kids but I can say that I'm not uncomfortable around them for some reason.

"What are we going to do, Duo?"

"We're going to do what we do best, fly by the seats of our pants."

"That is so not encouraging," I replied.

"Yeah, but it worked for us during the war."

He had a point.


End file.
